You Are Dumb, which is not a blog, posts new columns when it can manage to in these troubled Trumpian times. It is also a Twitter feed, @youaredumb, with content in a similar vein but much shorter. For a take on what a blog by me would be like, check out OLDNERD.

Most of the people we put in charge of us either start with, or develop, a complete and utter contempt for the people they “serve”. You’d think that contempt could eventually lead to them losing power once revealed, but they’ve developed strategies to avoid this, despite being IDIOTS who SAY THE DAMNDEST THINGS!

“She needs to come off County and State Aid Now that she has some cash. It’ll be gone in 6 months on crack cocaine.” - - Elysium MN city councilman and Rice County cop Tom McBroom, reacting to the settlement in the Philando Castile shooting.

One could, and some do, argue that the policing system in the United States isn’t inherently racist. They’re wrong, but that’s clearly a debate we as a society are willing to have so what white people can feel more comfortable. But in addition to that, there are a lot of deeply racist cops out there, which is a connected but disparate problem. There are also a lot of stupid cops out there, which is a whole other issue.

How stupid is Tom McBroom? Well, when confronted about his tweet by an area paper, he first denied he was a cop and councilman, and was just a general contractor. Then, when that didn’t work, he insisted he never said anything about crack cocaine, even though screenshots specifically show the words “crack cocaine”, which is what old racist white people call crack. Good news though! The systemic but apparently debatable racism that led to the situation that led to the settlement that McBroom could be racist about means that, a week or so later, he’s suffered no consequences Google News can identify!

”I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves – won’t lift a finger – and expect the federal government to do everything.”” - Senator Orrin Hatch, who recently took great umbrage at the suggestion that he doesn’t care about poor people.

Hatch was referencing the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which helps sick children get health insurance. The program expired earlier this year because it was time-limited and the Republican Congress neither cared enough to do something about it or, likely, was capable of doing something about it if they wanted to. But Hatch,let his true feelings show, because it’s 2017, and being a monster is apparently the new key to success.

This is what they think of us. That if you’re a sick kid without health insurance, it’s some kind of moral failing, either of the child or their parents, who somehow didn’t have the wherewithal to be an elderly, powerful, white, male, rich, sociopathic United States Senator from a state full of Mormons. That moral failing means that if Orrin Hatch is going to help save your life, it will be in the most begrudging manner possible, and only because feel-good politics of not letting children die are making him do it.

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” - Senator Chuck Grassley, who, admittedly, has always been deeply fucking stupid.

Remember when George Bush The Elder didn’t know what a grocery store bar code scanner was in 1992 and was hopelessly derided as out of touch? And he wasn’t even involved in making grocery store policy? Well, Chuck Grassley somehow decided that multimillionaires needed an estate tax break, and appears to have no fucking idea how people become multimillionaires.

Much like the Australian politician who thought young people could buy houses with themoney they spend on avocado toast, Trump’s economic advisor who said Americans could use their $1,000 middle class tax cut to buy a new car, or congressman Jason Chaffetz, who thought that poor people could afford health insurance by not buying a new iPhone, none of these people have any idea where money comes from, where it goes, or what things cost, because they’ve got people for that and they don’t have to. Yet they’re allowed to both pretend they do AND make public policy that affects all of us out of their ignorant myths about money. And they’re voted into office by poor people who think that contempt is only meant for brown poor people.Yay!